News

Capelin marching south of the trawl zone

Faxi RE is now steaming for Vopnafjördur with 1000 tonnes of capelin on board. The trawl-caught fish were taken in three tows in an area north-east of Iceland and around 100 nautical miles from Vopnafjördur. According to skipper Albert Sveinsson, it appears that most of this first capelin migration is now south of the trawl zone so it may be time to switch over to purse seining, assuming there is some time to wait for a further migration along the north coast.

Faxi sailed from Vopnafjördur on Monday night after a coupling between the gearbox and the generator had failed during the previous trip. Due to the breakdown, the ship lost electrical power, and there was no option but to have a new coupling flown to Vopnafjördur as quickly as possible and to have it fixed right away.

Albert Sveinsson said that there was some feed in their first haul of capelin, so the decision was taken to limit fishing to the dark hours.

‘It seems to have worked as there was much less feed in the fish we took in the other two hauls,’ Albert Sveinsson said, commenting that he hopes to see more capelin making its way into the trawl zone so they can continue to fish with a pelagic trawl.

‘But I’m hearing that pursing for capelin has been going well. The Norwegian boats have been getting 100 to 200 tonnes in a shot and there’s nothing wrong with pursing as long as the weather stays kind.’

Over the last few days it seems that there has been more smaller capelin caught with the large capelin that been seen so far this season, unusually large capelin by Icelandic standards. Albert Sveinsson said that he hopes for a good result from the present capelin survey that research vessel Árni Fridriksson is engaged in, although it will take some time to cover the whole area to be surveyed.